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Ridiculous Software Bug Workarounds?
theodp writes "Ever get a workaround for a bug from a vendor that's so rigoddamndiculous that there has to be a clueless MBA or an ornery developer behind it? For example, Microsoft once instructed users to wiggle their mouse continuously for several minutes if they wanted to see their Oracle data make it into Excel (yes, it worked!). And more recently, frustrated HP customers were instructed to use non-HP printers as their default printer if they don't want Microsoft Office 2007 to crash (was this demoed in The Mojave Experiment?). Any other candidates for the Lame Workaround Hall of Fame?"
but it was back in the days of Windows 95. I was working in software Localisation for a Lotus Notes product. We had several machines working in the test lab based on ghost images, so they were all pretty much identical.
One of the machines kept dying on us during the test phase, but none of the others did. Very confusing, for about a day. Until we realised that the machine which was crashing had an audio CD in the drive. (Not playing, not in Explorer. Just present in the drive.)
We verified it by swapping the audio cd into other machines, and running the same tests. Invariably, the machine with the CD in, crashed when we tried to perform task "x" in Lotus Notes.
It was escalated up, as I recall. And we eventually got a note back saying "Don't put CD's in the CD-Rom drives."
I still remember it (as a recent graduate) as my first exposure to management-style thinking.
Double click on a document. Word sits there for what seems like hours saying something like "Connecting to default printer. Press ESC to stop" so you give up and press ESC and start editing the document. Word promptly crashes. The workaround - set the default printer to Microsoft XPS and select the printer manually when you need it and wait the eternity it takes to communicate with the network printer. And sometimes it crashes again. WTF?
IIRC, a few GNU encryption programs do the same thing while collecting entropy, and yell at you if you don't wiggle enough.
In March, the Google Docs team introduced the Drawings feature. Now you can create drawings, schematics etc. in your Google Docs document. Now when you want to print your doc, or export it to some other format than HTML, then you get a nice error message.
If you want to export or print, the workaround for the last three months has been... not to use drawings in your documents! Great feature!
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I just spent 2 hours on the weekend getting my Mom's HP Printer to work on Windows Vista. I didn't even try Office yet and I'm guessing the headache will not stop.
Well I agree HP makes nice printers, I just don't see how they make them so hard to install on the Windows platform. Usally you have use there automatic Printer driver installer which takes 2 hours to run, it tries to find the printer N times every time failing and then the 1 time it finds the printer is connected the install freezes.
Well I haven't had any experiance with the bug, I would have to say that maybe HP should be going back to the drawing board with these printers and drivers because there causing enough trouble as it is.
Thanks
LinuxOverWindows
Yesterday a friend was frustrated with some ways PHP casts and compares values. Such as PHP would compare hexadecimal numbers in strings, but can cast only decimal, "0" == false, and apparently nan == nan on some compilers, and so on. His solution? A 150-line equals() method which uses the casting rules of Python and the coercion rules of JavaScript. At first he said it's just a joke experiment, but today when I asked him he said he might use it...
Lotus Domino server installations (circa 2000) would complete at about four to five times their "normal" speed if someone just sat there moving the mouse around whilst the install wizard was copying files. Go figure.
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b) Stop the users typing so fast.
Typing too fast caused people to die, in one case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
Specifically, go down to near the bottom of the entry where it mentions that: [t]he equipment control task did not properly synchronize with the operator interface task, so that race conditions occurred if the operator changed the setup too quickly. This was missed during testing, since it took some practice before operators were able to work quickly enough for the problem to occur.
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
Gah.
There's one program I have to use that's got some awesomely evil rules for what HTML is allowed in pasted text. It also uses one of those hacks to let you edit HTML in a text box as rich text. Combining these two features means that whenever you edit text on anything but IE, even if you don't need to use the rich text feature, it won't accept the text because it contains a non-allowed tag.
What's the tag?
<body>
The program Solaris Skunk Werks (A Battletech mech-maker program) currently has this annoying bug (or triggers an annoying bug in Java) that makes Drag and Drop functionality not only crash, but lock up X11, to the extent that I have to magic-Sysreq out if I forget and accidentally drag something.
What's worse is, the button for allocating items to slots stays grayed out if there's only one item. So, essentially, I have to either put two of everything on a Mech, or else reboot in Windows just to use a stupid roleplaying accessory.
When you used a computer as a time clock (running the client software and using a card swiper, instead of buying the special timeclock hardware), the licensing system on the "server" (which had to be logged in to run, as it wasn't a service but a running process) would lose track of a particular computer's license if more than one computer was running the timeclock client - and issue a new one the next time the client was run.
So, if you had purchased 15 licenses and were running 2 or more clocks (but less than the 15 you were supposedly allowed), you'd run out of licenses after a couple of days, even with light use.
After working for a month or so with the company to resolve the issue, what was their long term solution?
Give us a code that would give us "unlimited" (or somewhere in the area of 32,000 licenses).
After several years (like 8 or so) and much griping from me to switch to something else, we're still using the software, actually (but with only one swipe station, and only for our student workers in our biggest department), but will supposedly switch to something hosted and web based "soon".
I talk about stuff.
I guess many would be aware of the case of the 500-mile email. An office was not able to send emails to places which were physically located at a distance greater than 500 miles from the office! Entire story and the logic behind it can be read here - http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
The worst workaround I got was a while back with old Canon inkjet printers. I think it was with the BJC-250.
Sometime the printer would got stuck and there was no way to make it print. The led would be orange and even unplugging it would not work.
We had a whole bunch of these and they were under warranty. When we called tech support. The told us this:
Please disconnect every wire from the printer. Take the printer over your head and balance it from left to right 4 times. Put back everything ant test.
And it worked every time we did that ! The printer unstuck and began to print again.
It was really a hardware bug because we could reproduce it on each of thoses printers !
The Therac-25 incident also includes a great example of a ridiculous workaround for a serious (fatal!) software bug, the race condition triggered by this fast typing, or using an unexpected sequence of keys. The manufacturer's initial suggested fix was:
"Effective immediately, and until further notice, the key used for moving the cursor back through the prescription sequence (i.e., cursor "UP" inscribed with an upward pointing arrow) must not be used for editing or any other purpose.
To avoid accidental use of this key, the key cap must be removed and the switch contacts fixed in the open position with electrical tape or other insulating material. For assistance with the latter you should contact your local AECL service representative."
Quite rightly, the FDA concluded this was completely inadequate:
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_3.html
Start here for the whole sorry story:
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html
How about Ubisoft and RB6 Vegas? Remember that their fix around a big DRM issue was basically to install a no-cd crack by Reloaded? They just took the crack, renamed it, and then released as an official patch.
These weren't official ones. I developed them on my own.
The tape recorder was notoriously difficult to get the data to load right. Some tapes, saved on a different recorder, would require special tricks to get the readout "within specs".
One, I had to mute audio in the TV set to which the Atari was hooked up. I guess electromagnetic interference from the speaker was a problem. :)
On another, I'd have to hold the label with key functions on the recorder. The label was metal and connected to the recorder ground. By holding it, I was providing extra grounding that reduced the noise just enough to get the game to load. Luckily that one took only like 5 minutes to load
The best one was copied from a floppy. The copy was good, but there was no 'loader' program and the game was too big to fit with a copier to copy it to a different tape, and recorded from the beginning of the tape, no room to save the loader. The solution was to take a random different tape with a generic loader, start loading it, then after counting 6 "beeps" QUICKLY remove it and put the right tape in - the timeout tolerance was like 2-3s, so you really had to hurry.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
b) Stop the users typing so fast.
I worked with a VB program and would gave this workaround if I found it.
One (and only one!) of the user always faced a hanging problem when saving the form (after filling in > 100 fields!!). Spent a lot of time but did not found the cause. Eventually it was found that although the 'Save' button dimmed all buttons on the form, the OnClick event could be triggered using keyboard! And the function is not re-entrant. Obviously the user was double-clicking the Enter button. If I've witnessed how him used the program, I might have suggested him to "stop typing so fast"
Actually it makes sense, in a Microsoft sort of way. In the effort to make its WYSIWYG editors as WYSIWYG as possible, it offloads some rendering to printer drivers so as to mimic the printed copy as closely as possible. XPS has no rendering standard so it uses sane (but not good) defaults.
Of course they've never heard of PostScript. This kind of brain-damage is just a tiny part of the failure that is Microsoft WYSIWYG and typesetting "technology".
With a proper typesetter like LaTeX you get a PDF that's a dot-for-dot match with what you'd get in a calibrated printer, without ever having to assume any particular printer. It's the printer's responsibility to implement PostScript properly, not the typesetter's responsibility to tune its PostScript to the printer!
Sam ty sig.
I had an older version of Word and I wanted to make an A3 document - but my printer only supported A4.
You're lucky in that you appear to live in a locale that uses ISO 216 (A-series) paper sizes. ISO paper, unlike the U.S. letter series, has a nice mathematical definition: all sizes are the same aspect ratio of sqrt(2):1, and each size has twice the area and sqrt(2) times the length and width of the size below it. So make your document on A4 and print it on A3 at 141%.
I remember being new to Linux and the wonderful errors I use to get. It's funny when you come to Linux from a Windows enviroment and you see how just one package can bring down the system.
It's a good learning experiance to see how the system needs to interact properly and once you see how a system works in and out you never really seem to never go back.
Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, ok not really, but in the late 80s, Sun had a problem with some of their hard drives. When they would park they heads they would stick and you couldn't unpark them. Sun's solution was to tell you to HIT the computer. They even sent us a letter showing you where on the "pizza box" enclosure one would strike.
Arch updates better than Ubuntu. Unfortunately, Ubuntu is rather infamous for being nearly un-updateable without a fresh install. Often users are advised to just backup their home directory and do a clean format (I like Ubuntu, don't get me wrong, but let's call a spade a spade here: This is a problem which many linux developers and ubuntu community members seem to gloss over, from what I've seen).
Eight years ago, I had a job installing cable modems for home users. About a quarter of the time with Windows systems (and BTW, *very* rarely did I encounter anything but Windows), upon installing a NIC and setting all the network config options, it just wouldn't work. Neither I nor anyone at the subcontractor I worked for nor anyone at Huge Cable Company knew anything to do at this point other than reinstall Windows. Which of course we were not allowed to do. So every day I would have to tell a customer or two that unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to complete the cable modem installation until he reinstalled Windows. Then I would leave. Usually customers just gave up at this point. Sometimes they did it and called us back out, and then it would always work perfectly.
Something I just thought of... Back then, most systems I encountered did not have an ethernet port, so I was constantly installing NICs. I imagine the situation would be different today.
My tips I wish all Outlook users would adopt.
1.Set your send format to Plain Text other rational humans will thank you. If you really need complex formatting you probably should be sending it as some sort of attachment, it must be data and I should be able to consume it with the application of my choice rather than fight with it in Outlook's message window.
2.Don't use word as your mail editor. Outlook is much much faster and more responsive with that off. Again if you need an editor as complex as word you are actually doing something that is not E-Mail.
3.This is optional but good for your own security, set the message display type to clear text. In exchange environments the server will do a pretty good job of converting anything sent your way without a plain text mime section to plain text. Its not perfect though YMMV.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It is self documenting and shouldn't have a definition for the same reason we don't write up definitions for every word with 'fuck' inserted. fan-fucking-tastic for example.
Bad example. "Fan-fucking-tastic" is a well-documented and carefully studied term. Numerous articles and at least one book have touched upon this little gem. I highly recommend McCawley's "The Fucking Infix" for a start if you're interested in the aca-fucking-demic study of this sort of thing.
I used to manage Digital UNIX (later called Tru64) systems for a large, now bankrupt, telecom back around the turn of the millennium. The filesystem used, AdvFS, was pretty cool and advanced for the time but under the version of the OS we were running we found that free space would shrink at a faster rate than used space would grow. I had filesystems report full even though a df would show only 60% used.
It turned out that when small files were deleted all of the space wouldn't become free. My customer wrote thousands upon thousands of 150-200 byte files a day and deleted just as many. The entire team and my customer agreed this was clearly a bug.
When brought up with Compaq (who had recently aquired Digital) the technical rep investigated and reported "this is not a bug, the code is being executed exactly how it's written." Seriously, this was his response. I would have been more amused if he seriously argued it was a "feature."
I never could get a definition of what a "bug" really was from him. I became rather infuriated when he reported to me that this issue was "fixed" in the latest major release of the OS. If there was no bug, why was it fixed?
I never got a straight answer and was left on my own to find my own work-around which involved inserting a new volume into the filesystem thus growing it and then deleting an old volume. When this was done to all volumes in the filesystem, the problem was resolved for a few more months. This was an incredibly labor intensive and, as far as I'm concerned, incredibly risky to move data around like that on a hot system with insane uptime requirements. There was also a massive performance hit while this was happening and my customer's application was already VERY IO intensive.
I'm still just as angry about that conversation with the rep today as I was back then.
"WinXP has issues connecting to Win98 SMB printers via TCP or NetBEUI when connected to a DOS6 network running LANtastic. It would take about 15 minutes to find the printer and about 10 minutes to send a small document. There was no problem browsing the network, though."
So what, in the end, did the one person to ever have this problem do about it? Sorry! Couldn't help myself.
While modded funny, it's actually true.
Under Vista, my Canon scanner actually contributed to system instability. I discovered this early on, and plugged it in only when needed.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
As an official old fart for real, the silliest I ever encountered was technically a hardware bug. Not sure you youngins can relate being raised on surface mount technology, but on the Apple III the sockets on the motherboard were defective so the chips would slowly work loose and the machine would stop working. Apple's official solution ran along the lines of "Unplug the machine. Lift about six to eight inches off the table holding it level and let go." The fall and sudden stop at the end hopefully would cause the chips to reseat themselves. I used to have the actual service notice they sent out with those instructions but lost it in a move. Then there was the Ethernet card that would occasionally stop working. This is back in the Thin/Thin coax days, 10-base5 and 10-base2 for those of you with 802.3 fixations. The vendor's (long since out of business and forgotten for obvious reasons) solution was to have you remove the terminator from the cable for at least 5 minutes. That of course would bring the entire network segment down during that time, just the sort of thing you want to do in the data center with all the servers. Rebooting at least would only effect the one host, but that was "not recommended" by the vendor.
I really love my MAC, I've completely switched over after using PCs since early dos days.
Lately I've been trying to install parallels so I can run a few Windows games.
Parallels struggles for a while, then says that there are "unmovable files" and that I need to back up my hard disk and re-install OS-X!
After looking into it, The problem is that the mac drive is fragmented and the mac has no way to defragment some system files (the file in question appears to be the latest OS upgrade which seems to be kept inside it's original file).
So, I looked around for defragmenting programs, but nearly every reference is either Apple or Apple fanboys telling you that the mac doesn't need defragmenting.
Well, I guess it's true, the mac does NOT need defragmenting, just the occasional wipe and re-install!
I'm not really disagreeing with the concepts here--the OS does self-defragment to a degree, the file IS a system file and shouldn't be movable, etc. What I hate is the damn arrogance, every reply to a post on defragmenting was along the lines of "Man are you STUPID, MACs don't need defragmenting! That's so PC" (and yet apple itself recommending a re-install to force a defragment when it is needed).
Makes me hate this cult I appear to be a member of.
In a Microsoft text editing product with a long document, click and hold with the mouse and drag down below the bottom of the text field to select more than one page of text. It doesn't work. If you want it to select with any speed you have to wiggle the mouse back and forth.